Choices, Choices...

<p>I've been on the EULA end of the web for some time now and any savvy creation skills I once had went the way of Geocities. So here I am now, switching from film to digital and confronted with a battalion of new software programs to first chose from and then learn. From the outset I decided to stick with Adobe products for their integration abilities, wide use and support. Along with photo editing I want to host my own gallery site and eventually be able to create basic but stimulating, multi page sites for small non-profits.<br>

For photo editing Photoshop was the obvious choice until I found out about Lightroom2. From Adobe's site it seems the obvious choice for the novice.<br>

I've been playing around with the free trial of Dreamweaver for a few days now and it seems right for creating the non-profit/corporate site but time consuming for the photo site. <br /> What combination of software would you recommend to accomplish both tasks without adding extraneous details to learn?</p>

<p>There are a number of open source photo gallery CMS (content management systems) that allow you to use just your web browser for site maintenance and construction. I have used both Gallery 2 http://gallery.menalto.com/ and Zen Photo http://www.zenphoto.org/ on Dreamhost.com -- lots of features and the learning curve isn't bad at all.<br>

You can use the money you would spend on commercial web design software to buy more photo gear -- "cloud computing" is the direction things are going anyway.</p>